1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tire sealant liquid container, and more specifically to a tire sealant liquid container having a simple structure and preventing a tire sealant liquid from flowing back toward a compressor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, what is called a puncture repair kit has been widely used. When a pneumatic tire (hereinafter, simply referred to as “tire”) is punctured, the puncture repair kit is used to inject a tire sealant liquid into the punctured tire so that the tire sealant liquid can flow in a hole caused by the puncture. Then, with the puncture repair kit, the inner pressure of the punctured tire is increased up to a predetermined regulation value. Use of such a puncture repair kit eliminates the need of loading a vehicle with a spare tire, and thus has an advantage in resource saving and vehicle weight reduction as well as an advantage of allowing a space provided for loading a spare tire to be effectively used for another purpose.
FIG. 6 shows a usage state of a conventional tire sealant liquid container. The tire sealant liquid container 1 includes a container body 2 accommodating a tire sealant liquid 7 therein. The container body 2 is provided with an air inlet 3 and a tire sealant liquid outlet 4 on the lower side. An air supply hose 5 and a tire sealant liquid injection hose 6 are connected to the air inlet 3 and the tire sealant liquid outlet 4, respectively. Compressed air outputted by a compressor C passes through the air supply hose 5, and then enters the container body 2 through the air inlet 3. As a result, the compressed air pushes out the tire sealant liquid 7 accommodated in the container body 2 through the tire sealant liquid outlet 4. Then, the tire sealant liquid 7 passes through the tire sealant liquid injection hose 6, and is then introduced in a tire T.
However, a puncture repair kit to be used as above has a risk of allowing a tire sealant liquid to flow back through an air supply hose upon shutdown of a compressor. This might further lead to a problem that, after flowing back, the tire sealant liquid enters the compressor, which causes breakdown of the compressor to disable the operation thereof.
To solve this problem, Japanese patent application Kokai publication No. 2008-23909 discloses a sealing pump-up device having a housing in which a compressed air supply channel and a gas/liquid supply pipe line are connected to a sealant container. In this proposal, each of the compressed air supply channel and the gas/liquid supply pipe line winds its way in the housing so as to partially come above the liquid level of a sealant in the sealant container.
Such a structure in which pipe lines wind their way in a housing can prevent flowing back or leakage of a sealant. However, the structure requires the housing to accommodate the pipe lines, and thus increases the size of the whole device. Accordingly, an increased space is needed in a vehicle in order to accommodate the device having the structure. Thus, the structure has a problem of being incapable of fully giving a vehicle a benefit due to the elimination of a spare tire, such as vehicle weight reduction or effective use of space.